serves, asserting, that the Pharisees were between
the Essens and Sadducees, and did so far ascribe all to fate or Divine
Providence as was consistent with the freedom of human actions. However,
their perplexed way of talking about fate, or Providence, as overruling
all things, made it commonly thought they were willing to excuse their
sins by ascribing them to fate, as in the Apostolical Constitutions,
B. VI. ch. 6. Perhaps under the same general name some difference of
opinions in this point might be propagated, as is very common in all
parties, especially in points of metaphysical subtilty. However, our
Josephus, who in his heart was a great admirer of the piety of the
Essens, was yet in practice a Pharisee, as he himself informs us, in his
own Life, sect. 2. And his account of this doctrine of the Pharisees is
for certain agreeable to his own opinion, who ever both fully allowed
the freedom of human actions, and yet strongly believed the powerful
interposition of Divine Providence. See concerning this matter a
remarkable clause, Antiq. B. XVI. ch. 11. sect. 7.

[12] This king, who was of the famous race of Arsaces, is bethused to
call them; but by the elder author of the First Maccahere, and 1 Macc.
14:2, called by the family name Arsaces; was, the king of the Persians
and Medes, according to the land but Appion says his proper name was
Phraates. He is language of the Eastern nations. See Authent. Rec. Part
II. also called by Josephus the king of the Parthians, as the Greeks p.
1108.

[13] There is some error in the copies here, when no more than four
years are ascribed to the high priesthood of Jonathan. We know by
Josephus's last Jewish chronology, Antiq. B. XX. ch. 10., that there was
an interval of seven years between the death of Alcimus, or Jacimus, the
last high priest, and the real high priesthood of Jonathan, to whom yet
those seven years seem here to be ascribed, as a part of them were to
Judas before, Antiq. B. XII. ch. 10. sect. 6. Now since, besides these
seven years interregnum in the pontificate, we are told, Antiq. B. XX.
ch. 10., that Jonathan's real high priesthood lasted seven years more,
these two seven years will make up fourteen years, which I suppose was
Josephus's own number in this place, instead of the four in our present
copies.

[14] These one hundred and seventy years of the Assyrians mean no more,
as Josephus explains himself here, than from the sara of Seleucus, which
as it is known